D&D BREAKING – Mordenkainen’s Monsters Of The Multiverse Standalone Release Date, New Monster, And More
WotC previewed Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse today, including a look at the standalone release.
Wizards of the Coast gave a press briefing earlier, previewing Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse. The new book, which contains 250 monsters and 33 playable races is a big update for D&D.
In Monsters of the Multiverse, we get our first glimpse of what the future hold for D&D. The book is being released as part of a gift set on January 25th. The Rules Expansion Gift Set gathers together Monsters of the Multiverse plus Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything and Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. It will retail for $170. But if you happen to already have the other two books–the good news is Monsters of the Multiverse will be available as a standalone book.
You can pre-order it now on D&D Beyond for only $49.99. But you’ll have to wait until May to unlock your purchase though. As the official standalone release date is May 17th.
Changes To Player Races
The press briefing was also a chance to talk in broader terms about the future of D&D. It was a peek behind the curtains of the game’s design. In the briefing, Crawford explained that there were two directions: game design and balance alongside storytelling potential.
From a design standpoint, the new book is focused on rebalancing the existing races while keeping them open to different “player stories.”
If you’ve seen the big list of spoilers, you’ll know that features like cunning artisan or elven weapon training have been by and large excised from the game. Part of the reasoning for this is the design team stepping back from the “all elves know longswords” kind of thinking. But this has left many people wondering what would replace those features.
Challenge Rating Changes
According to Crawford, they don’t want to create limitations or barriers to player imagination. This means that the idea of a player race is a lot more streamlined in the future. Monsters also get a big overhaul. As Crawford told Gizmodo:
“We’ve gotten pretty consistent feedback since the core books in 2014 that a number of our high CR monsters felt a bit too weak, like they were punching below their challenge rating.”
And while Monsters of the Multiverse won’t overhaul the CR system entirely, it looks like a lot of monsters, especially higher CR monsters are getting some buffs:
“Part of this work was also us changing how these monsters earn their challenge rating. In those previous books, the monsters did hit their challenge ratings, but we used a different method to hit it. In the past, all a monster had to do was have a set of combat options that, if the DM chose that right set, the monster was that challenge rating. Here’s the issue with that approach: if the DM doesn’t happen to pick that golden path, a number of those monsters then fall out of their challenge rating.
In Monsters of the Multiverse, we’ve changed the approach. We’ve now made it so that each of the monsters has multiple choice sequences that lead to the same CR. And so what that’s going to do is give groups who never fought the optimal version of the monster [a challenge that feels] way more powerful… We also did protect their non-combat options, so it is possible for a monster to not be as threatening as its CR may suggest, but we made it clearer to the DM when they are taking that path. The DM will be able to make a more informed choice.”
Crawford also teased a new monster, the Dolphin Delighter–which sounds less menacing than Dolphin Devilgalive.
The Dolphin Delighter is a fae dolphin that has telepathy and teleportation.
The Rules Expansion Gift Set is out January 25th, 2022
