Summary
- The 2025 Monster Manual will feature over 500 monsters, including 75 new ones.
- An expanded NPC section adds stat blocks for new professions and personalities.
- Returning monsters maintain the same challenge rating while receiving tweaks.
The slate of DnD's most iconic enemies and serves as a necessary reference when running official campaign adventures.
In a press briefing for the 2025 Monster Manual, lead DnD rules designer Jeremy Crawford confirmed that the book will feature "over 500 monsters," a significant advancement over the 300 or so featured in the 2014 version. Among these, over 75 are completely new additions. The new Monster Manual will also feature an increased array of NPC stat blocks, expanding a previously slim selection to include performers, pirates, and more.
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Adding More Monsters Isn't The Only Meaningful Change
Having more monsters to reference in one book should be music to most dungeon masters' ears, as variety in a campaign is always a good thing. The expanded selection includes new variants among existing categories of monsters, like a fiery new skeleton enemy that could pose a stronger threat than the average set of clanking bones. This could be helpful for dungeon masters looking to fit iconic enemies into lower- or higher-level play than they've traditionally been suited for, shaking things up through a more substantial method than just tweaking stats.
Things also aren't staying the same among the returning monsters, which are getting their own updates while keeping the same challenge ratings that they received in 2014. Ideally, this should give monsters that previously felt dull more interesting abilities, with any potential gain in power offset by equivalent weaknesses.
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Dungeon Master's Guide, revised guidelines for building encounters allocate a larger pool of XP to distribute on high-level encounters, which could allow fights without individual high CR foes to still become overwhelming in scale.
The 2025 Monster Manual is set for a wide release on February 18 with early access available on February 4 through purchases from local game stores and D&D Beyond pre-orders of the digital and physical bundle. Grabbing the new book might not be strictly necessary for dungeon masters already equipped with the 2014 version, but it's definitely promising some attractive improvements. 500 monsters is nothing to sneeze at, and even the most seasoned adventurers might encounter exciting new Dungeons & Dragons trials this year.
- Franchise
- Dungeons & Dragons
- Original Release Date
- 1974
Dungeons and Dragons is a popular tabletop game originally invented in 1974 by Ernest Gary Gygax and David Arneson. The fantasy role-playing game brings together players for a campaign with various components, including abilities, races, character classes, monsters, and treasures. The game has drastically expanded since the '70s, with numerous updated box sets and expansions.
- Publisher
- TSR Inc., Wizards of the Coast
- Designer
- E. Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson
