Reviewing Monsters - D&D / Tabletop RPG

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Dungeons & Dragons - 5th Edition

This is a  flavour-centric review of the creatures and monsters of Dungeons & Dragons. While I am a huge fan of the worlds and game, the thing that captured me first and foremost when I discovered the TTRPG format in the first place are the Monster Manuals and Bestiaries. Growing up on Pokemon and Digimon, it was most certainly a huge trip when I first got my hands on the 3.5th Edition Monster Manual for Dungeons & Dragons and started just poring through them to see what these 'real' monsters are in the 'real' tabletop RPG that every other franchise seems to refer to. 

These reviews and commentary take a fair amount of time to produce, as well as to read. So while I had initially intended to do all the 'base' Monster Manuals for all D&D Editions and Pathfinder, the amount of overlap in terms of monsters and the time needed to read and write these articles have made me decide that it's more interesting to deep-dive into the 'base' Monster Manual(s) of the current D&D edition, 5th Edition, and use this as a 'backbone', so to speak, before tackling all the other editions. 

While I do plan to finish reviewing all the 5E books first, bestiaries will always take priority, and I will also give more attention to books that I physically own.
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5th Edition recently got a refresh and update in 2024 with what's called 'DND 2024 or 5.5th Edition', and as such it gave me an excuse to go back and revise my older articles written in 2019. As such, I am currently in the process of updating and re-releasing a lot of the content I've written when I was a bit less experienced.

Click here for the an index of the D&D 5th Edition monsters sorted by name to see if/when I have writen about them -- currently only including my rewrites. 

5th Edition Monster Manual:
[Rewritten in 2025 to include 5.5E/2024 content]


5th Edition - Monsters of the Multiverse
Two bestiaries originally released as Volo's Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, both books later compiled in 5.5E as Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse. Essentially functions as 5th Edition's second Monster Manual. 
  • 5th Edition: Volo's Guide to Monsters
    • Part #1: Banderhobb to Darkling
    • Part #2: Deep Scion to Girallon
    • Part #3: Grung to Mindwitness
    • Part #4: Morkoth to Slithering Tracker
    • Part #4: Spawn of Kyuss to Yuan-ti
  • 5th Edition: Mordekainen's Tome of Foes
  • 5th Edition: Mordenkainen's Monsters of the Multiverse
    • Part X: Appendix

5th Edition - Other Bestiaries & Adventures
The franchise has released numerous content, many of them containing monsters. There are a couple of 'splatbooks' that specifically contain content for building characters, explaining settings, and what this blog is concerned with: monsters!

Bestiaries / Splatbooks:

Adventures / Setting Guides:
Other than the last two entries, these are all up for rewrites as well. Adventures tend to focus more on the titular adventure than monster blocks, but there are interesting entries that appear exclusively in adventures and are not reflected in a proper bestiary. These articles collect the statblocks in various adventure modules in very rough chronological order, although some adventures and setting books do have enough to hold their own article. 

Those marked with an asterisk (*) are older, messier, overly cluttered and will be subject to change and merger as I clean up the D&D articles. 

2nd Edition AD&D - Monstrous Manual
After managing to find a physical copy of 2nd Edition AD&D's Monstrous Manual, I decide to do a read-through of the whole book! Unlike the 5th Edition review, while I go through all the entries, I do not go into detail into monsters that I have covered in 5E material unless I have something interesting to say, at which point the review will link to the 5E articles above. This makes this series a bit more of a 'read-along' more than a proper reviewing monsters segment, but it's nice to see the differences across D&D's earliest age and its modern incarnations. 
  • Coming 2026!


OLDER EDITIONS
Also older; I had some problems doing these due to significant overlap with the 5E books. At some point in the future I'll probably do all five 3.5E bestiaries, but that will be a long time coming. 

I did find the 2E AD&D Monstrous Manual, and that's also a book that I'll likely be doing an extensive coverage of. But in the future.
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Pathfinder

I do know that TTRPG-wise, this blog has a heavy Dungeons & Dragons slant, but that's just no knock to Pathfinder, whose original edition's five bestiaries are no slouches either. I just wanted to tackle the games one at a time. I do have the full set of five 1E Bestiaries and the 2E Monster Core, and at some point in the future will review them. Probably after I complete most of 5th Edition, but still. 
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Magic: The Gathering

Thallid Devourer

The grandfather of collectible trading card games. 

Magic: The Gathering has a lot of cards to talk about, but where my reviews are concerned, I will be discussing more about the monsters and flavour. These articles were originally written circa 2019, and since then my experience and knowledge of the game has vastly increased. Currently (as of 2024), under intensive rewriting to bring the reviews to a modern standard.

Classic Magic: [Alpha to Scourge]
Revised articles:
Older articles [rewrites post-Mirage on hiatus while I work on D&D]:
Modern Magic: [post-Mirrodin:]
  • Coming in the future

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