Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Monster Manual

The Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Monster Manual is revised, expanded, and updated from 2014’s 5th Edition Monster Manual. The launch of this new bestiary completes D&D’s 50th anniversary core rules trifecta: Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual.

With those three books—each one numbering 384 pages in length—you’ve got everything you need to play “The World’s Greatest Roleplaying Game.” There will be more books, of course. The 2025 road map includes sourcebooks and adventures: a Dragon Anthology, new Starter Set, Forgotten Realms Player Guide, and Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide. They are only supplementary. But just like any supplementary book, this Monster Manual has to justify its existence, too.

Brand new artwork for every creature wouldn’t be enough—though there is. Buffed stat blocks for every creature wouldn’t be enough—though they are. More monsters than any previous Monster Manual might do it—and there are.

In a nutshell, here’s what’s new in the 2024 Monster Manual: More monsters, new monsters, refined rules, enhanced stat blocks, reconfigured creature types, improved organization, and expanded lists.

To start, layout, design, and readability improved, even if this one takes a little getting used to. Every monster is listed alphabetically now. There used to be some sensible groupings of creatures like Dragons. But to find, say, Quasits and Nalfeshnees, you had to remember that they're under D for Demons. It seemed okay at the time. But in retrospect of this cleanly alphabetized Monster Manual, the old way seems crazy. Even if under the new way you've got to realize that Dragons are alphabetized by their color: Blue Dragons under the B's, Gold Dragons under the G's, and so on.

They say to never judge a book by its cover—but it’s indeed where any book begins. And the cover to the 2024 Monster Manual has got monsters. A green-eyed beholder looms with teeth and tongue over two legendary Forgotten Realms heroes. Kraken-sized tentacles reach up from below, ogres and displacer beasts come from the right, while goblins and gelatinous cubes come from the left. The next six seconds of combat are going to be hectic for our heroes.

Which is exactly what Dungeon Masters want. DMs want to put their players in peril. DMs also want their players to pull through. But no DM wants a landslide victory for either side. Having a total player kill (TPK) bog down every session would be painful imbalance of fun. Yet players steamrolling through every encounter is the same problem in the opposite direction. No risk, no reward.

The Player’s Handbook can be chock full of new character classes and abilities and spells. The Dungeon Master’s Guide can teach a DM how to balance the ups and downs of narrative and combat pacing. But the Monster Manual is where the rubber meets the road. The types and amount of creatures you throw at your players will determine your sense of fairness in these made-up worlds. The dice may tell one story, while the realities of combat may tell another, with a third anecdote arriving in the form of your players’ actions, whether good or bad, careful or careless.

There are three pillars of D&D gameplay: combat, exploration, and social interaction. Most of what exists in the three core rulebooks are in service of combat. Sure, any DM can rebalance that scale. But if we’re just looking at raw word count and what service the PHB, DMG, and MM provide, it’s a fair assumption that combat is the core tenet of Dungeons & Dragons.

Lead Designer Jeremy Crawford still has only one reply when asked, “What’s changed in this new book?”

“Everything.”

As usual, Crawford means it. From the artwork to the stat blocks, no stone was left unturned. In short: every monster looks awesome and hits harder than ever before. This is presumably to counterbalance the fact that players also hit harder than ever before, given all the buffs in the 2024 Player’s Handbook. In general, everyone and everything in D&D 2024 is bigger, badder, and there are more of them.

Building upon its 350-creature predecessor, this edition offers over 500 creatures (I counted literally 501), with 75 making their Monster Manual debut. They expand the roster but also reimagined existing ones. Some creatures are variations—such as different life stages of dragons—but the majority are unique entities, along with some new sub-entries filling in gaps in the Challenge Ratings. There is higher challenge blight. There are lower and higher (!) challenge vampires to face, if you can believe that. Similar gaps were filled all throughout the manual.

This book isn’t all enemies. Any creature can be an adversary or an ally. It all depends on your perspective. A Gold Dragon is an excellent friend to have at your back. It’s also a terrifying foe to stand against. That’s up to your DM and the adventure they’ve laid out. And of course it’s also up to the players and whether they plan to ruin the DM’s plans. It’s all part of the game. My players slide into each other's direct messages frequently for this exact purpose.

A standout feature of this edition is the resurrection of creatures from earlier editions. The Colossus, for instance, makes a triumphant return from the 1st Edition Monster Manual. Yes, it existed within different sourcebooks along the way, but this is the Colossus’s triumphal return to its rightful place within the Monster Manual. With a formidable Challenge Rating (CR) of 25, it surpasses even Ancient Red and Gold Dragons, positioning itself just below the top dog of the entire book, the CR 30 Tarrasque. The Colossus exemplifies the manual's commitment to honoring D&D's legacy while adapting to contemporary gameplay.

The "Bloodied" condition, a mechanic from 4th Edition, returns in this manual. Not for all creatures, but for a handful. When a creature's hit points drop to about half, it becomes Bloodied, potentially altering its behavior. For example, a Bloodied boar gains Advantage on attack rolls, reflecting its heightened desperation. This mechanic adds depth to combat encounters, requiring players to adapt their strategies as battles progress. Bloodied can also indicate that swarms of creatures, for example, are at half their hit points, and presumes that half of the swarm has been defeated, making the swarm deal only half damage in this bloodied condition. Sensible, even if less exciting.

The manual revisits creature classifications, leading to notable reassignments. One such change is Goblins. Traditionally categorized as Humanoids, they are now Fey. This shift emphasizes their mystical origins and aligns with their portrayal in various D&D lore. Such reclassifications impact gameplay mechanics, especially concerning spells and abilities that target specific creature types. Players will have to rethink tried-and-true tactical approaches. The designers are okay with that.

A notable absence from the book is Orcs. A creature with traditions reaching back to the very beginnings of D&D, it’s both shocking and expected (if you've been paying attention to the last few years of D&D's don't-be-problematic initiatives) to no longer see an Orc stat block. Instead they are now treated like many other Humanoid races such as Humans, Elves, and Dwarves. The reason you won’t find an Orc stat block anymore is because Orcs are absorbed into the non-species-specific family of non-player character (NPC) stat blocks. Orcs can now be found as Commoners, Nobles, Pirates, and Priests. Goodbye, chaotic evil Orc, Orc War Chief, and Orc Eye of Gruumsh. Hello, neutral Toughs and Bandits.

Drow—Dark Elves—are another notable species stricken from the 2024 Monster Manual. No more Drow, Drow Elite Warrior, Drow Mage, or Drow Priestess of Lloth. Instead you can find their legacy buried in the Priest Acolyte, Gladiator, Bandit Deceiver, and Fiend Cultist NPC stat blocks. Goodbye, neutral evil Drow. Although dark-skinned, light-haired elves feature in the Commoner artwork. That’s where more than a few Drow have been integrated into NPC society.

Also, if you’re looking for Duergar—Gray Dwarves—they’ve been converted into Scout NPC stat blocks. That doesn’t mean only Duergard can serve as Scouts. Any species can be plugged into any NPC role. Still, it’s bittersweet to see some species lose their stat blocks. Publisher Wizards of the Coast is doing its level best to prune problematic species depictions. I would’ve liked to see a more productive conversation arise rather than a wholesale deletion. I would’ve liked Wizards of the Coast to, perhaps, teach us how to deconstruct Orc, Drow, and Duergar stereotypes. Instead, the company has decided, in a sense, to make the problem literally disappear.

This does, however, open up pages for some of those brand new creatures. Introducing the Elemental Cataclysm, the manual gives a stat block for a veritable act of God. The elemental embodies the raw power of the elemental planes. This Chaotic Neutral entity cycles through elemental dominances—Earth, Air, Fire, and Water—every round, unleashing corresponding destructive forces. Its presence signifies monumental events, giving DMs a powerful narrative device.

Artwork is highly subjective. But it’s hard to argue that all-new artwork for each and every creature is a bad thing.

Not only have these creatures been repainted with fresh eyes, they are now drawn in dynamic, context-rich scenarios. Very few monsters stand in front of a blank background as in Monster Manuals of the past. Almost all are flying, fighting, or fumbling around environments. Often they’re giving an enemy what for. At the very least, it brings greater scale to gargantuan creatures like Tarrasques and Purple Worms, or shows off their diminutive nature like Quasits and Faerie Dragons.

Also, every Ancient Dragon is given a full-page spread. As they should be for a game called Dungeons & Dragons celebrating its 50th anniversary.

You’d think a manual full of stat blocks, which themselves comprise a lot of, well, stats, isn’t where you’d find Wizards of the Coast flexing its writerly muscles. But they most certainly are. A short, pithy description of every creature appears under its name now. Black Dragons are “Dragons of Decay and Despair.” Githyanki are “Invaders from the Astral Plane.” Salamanders are “Serpentine Artists of the Inferno.” My goodness, brilliance lurks in every byline.

I’d love to play a game of Jeopardy that is made up of only these descriptions. Question: An Infamous Many-Eyed Tyrant. Answer: What is a Beholder. Q: The End and Beginning of Ages. A: What is an Elemental Cataclysm. These small but perfectly composed writeups contribute to Lead Designer F. Wesley Schneider’s thesis that “Every monster is a springboard to adventure.”

If you can find them. Again, it takes a moment to break certain monsters out of their previous groupings. You’ll no longer find every color of dragon listed under Dragon. Instead, you’ll find them alphabetized by color, whether chromatic or metallic. Black Dragons are found between Berserker and Black Pudding. Copper Dragons appear after Commoner and before Couatl.

If you haven’t committed all of those colors to memory and need help tracking them down, the appendices in the back are there to help. That’s where all the dragons are listed together. As well as every other creature type, such as Aberrations, Celestials, and those squirrely Humanoids. The Monsters by Challenge Rating is another well-composed appendix. You can draw a line all the way from CR 0 creatures—like bats and cats—all the way up to top-tier CR creatures—like the brand new Blog of Annihilation (CR 23) or the once and future king, the Tarrasque, at CR 30.

In for a penny, in for a pound. Everything escalates in D&D 2024. So if you're invested in the new Player's Handbook and new Dungeon Master's Guide, then I recommend you invest in the new Monster Manual. Because if your players are building characters out of the 2024 PHB, you'll need the bigger, badder monsters in the 2024 MM to rebalance your table. Otherwise, Dungeon Master, you'll be bringing 5th Edition knives to a 50th anniversary gun fight.

The 2024 Monster Manual is more than just a collection of stat blocks—it’s a statement on how D&D has evolved over the past 50 years and where it’s headed next. With over 500 creatures, revised mechanics, new artwork, and a deliberate shift in how certain species are presented, this book reflects a game that continues to adapt to its players, its history, and its future.