D&D’s High Level Monsters Will Be Stronger In New Book
New book Mordenkainen Presents: Multiverse of Monsters will make some of the high-level Dungeons & Dragons monsters stronger in battle, making it harder for players to overcome them. D&D uses the Challenge Rating system to give DMs a rough idea of how strong an enemy will be against a party, but the countless character options and group compositions mean that there's no guarantee that an enemy will be challenging.
The D&D Challenge Rating of a monster is a number listed on its stat block. The number means that it will provide a challenging encounter for a party of 4-6 characters of the same level. A dire wolf has a Challenge Rating of one, which means it should be challenging for a party of first-level characters in battle. A creature with a higher challenge rating can be used as a tough boss monster, while a group of creatures with a small challenge rating can match the party through numbers. This isn't to say that all creatures pack an equal punch, which the powerful low-level D&D cow encounter can attest to.
Multiverse of Monsters is an upcoming D&D book that contains updated versions of existing monsters, including the ones that appeared in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes and Volo's Guide to Monsters. The book will originally be released as part of the D&D Rules Expansion Gift Set on January 25 and will receive a standalone release in May. It was revealed during a recent press event for Multiverse of Monsters that some of the monsters have been made stronger, most notably the high-level ones. D&D's Principal Rules Designer Jeremy Crawford explained that this is in response to player feedback.
Monsters were originally graded based on their combat options and in a lot of cases, monsters had a single optimal selection of attacks and abilities that made them strong. If DMs weren't running the optimal strategy, then the D&D monster is weaker than its Challenge Rating. These monsters have been updated as part of a new method of determining Challenge Ratings. Crawford said that monsters have retained their original Challenge Rating, in order to ensure they're still compatible with existing D&D books, but that they are more worthy of their Challenge Rating.
One issue with the existing D&D rules is that solo high-level monsters tend to fare worse in battle than groups of weaker enemies, due to the nature of the action economy. A group that can fire its best abilities into one target is going to have the upper hand against a creature that can only take one or two actions, and even the power of Legendary and Lair actions can only do so much to give monsters more of a chance. Hopefully, the updated versions of the D&D monsters in Multiverse of Monsters will pack more of a punch than their original versions.
Mordenkainen Presents: Multiverse of Monsters will be released as part of the D&D Rules Expansion Gift Set on January 25 and will have a standalone release on May 17.