The 2025 Monster Manual for Dungeons & Dragons brings over 500 creatures to the fifth edition of the game with brand-new monsters, redesigned stat blocks, and expanded lore. Whether you’re a Dungeon Master looking for new foes or a player curious about legendary creatures, this updated manual offers a wealth of content to enhance any campaign.
With its improved organization, habitat-based encounter suggestions, and fresh mechanics, the Monster Manual aims to make running and fighting monsters more exciting than ever. In this article, we’ll answer the most frequently asked questions about the 2025 edition of the Monster Manual, to see whether it's right for you.
The 2025 Monster Manual is 384 pages long, with all creatures being ordered alphabetically instead of by creature. This means that all the black dragons are under B for black instead of R for dragon, while the gelatinous cube is in G instead of in O for ooze. The beasts and other creatures associated with normal animals are all on Appendix A, after all the other monsters. In Appendix B, the final chapter of the book, all the creatures are organized according to whatever the Dungeon Master might need: by type, challenge rating, or even habitat.
The book starts with an introduction about how to use the book, how to read the stat blocks, and how to change monsters as you see fit. It relies on information given in the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide, particularly the chapter on treasure, to figure out the loot on a creature.
Afterward, as mentioned before, all the creatures appear alphabetically. Some creatures, especially new ones, appear in subsections, like the questing knight being right under the knight (therefore being in K) while the swarm of lemures being right under the lemure (therefore being in L).
The book also contains art for every creature, with each monster behaving as they would in their natural habitat, and the tone of the image reflects either the whimsical nature or the dread a creature imposes.
If the 2025 Monster Manual replaces anything, it is the 2014 Monster Manual. Many books and published adventures reference creatures from the Monster Manual, assuming you have those stat blocks, and said basic creatures were never in Monsters of the Multiverse to begin with.
As such, Monsters of the Multiverse continues to be an excellent supplement for the Monster Manual, no matter what version you have of it. The creatures presented in the 2025 Monster Manual are either brand new or an updated version of the 2014 book; nothing in it replaces entries from Monsters Of The Multiverse.
In total, the 2025 Monster Manual includes 504 unique monsters, with 75 of those monsters being brand new. The book has a wide spread of levels, giving you ample choice for low-level adventures to final bosses of long-running campaigns.
Yes, all the creatures from the 2014 Monster Manual are in the 2025 edition, although not all with the same name. You can find all these conversions in Appendix B of the Monster Manual, found on the back of the book.
Some name changes are to make a creature fill a role without representing a whole species, like the duergar stat block now being the spy stat block. Others simply needed the name change for clarity, like the poisonous snake now being known as the venomous snake.
Various aspects of nearly all monsters have been revised, mainly to make it simpler to run the creature for the Dungeon Master. Many creatures that needed a more complex mechanic, like dragons, now have spellcasting, while others that didn’t need it, like pit fiends, now have a mechanic instead of spells.
The creature types of many monsters have been changed to better represent them. The githyanki and the githzerai are now both considered aberrations due to their alien minds, while lycanthropes and kenku are classified as monstrosities due to their cursed nature.
All in all, the monsters in the book have been made deadlier and more dynamic, each feeling truly distinct from one another. Most lair actions have been included in the stat blocks of legendary creatures that had them, while details about how lairs affect the surrounding area have been expanded.
Yes, any and all content that falls under the umbrella of the fifth edition is compatible with the 2025 Monster Manual, and you are free to use those monsters in old adventures. Of course, the damage scaling and abilities of the new monsters are balanced around the 2024 edition of the rules, which includes plenty of buffs to healing spells and items, so keep that in mind.
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