Wizards of the Coast’s Reveals Monsters of the Multiverse Details

January 18, 2022

Dungeons & Dragons/ Nerdy News/ Previews

Wizards of the Coast held a press briefing recently to share details about the upcoming D&D Rules Expansion Gift Set, which contains new printings of Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything and a new volume — Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse. I’ve got a variety of details to share but I won’t bury the lede for the info a huge number of folks want to know. Monsters of the Multiverse releases for individual sale on May 17, 2022 and it will not be available through WotC’s digital partners like D&D Beyond until this date. Let’s get into it.

5E D&D monsters designed for your pleasure

Greg Tito, communications manager for WotC and host of the press briefing first introduced D&D’s Head of Publishing and Licensing Liz Schuh, who showed a selection of artwork and illustrations for the D&D Rules Expansion Gift Set. You can check out the gallery below to see these, which comprised both the standard version featuring Grzegorz Rutkowski’s art and alternate art versions of all three books, their slipcases and the Dungeon Master’s Screen included in the set as well.

The concept behind the gift set is a sort of bookend for 2018’s Core Rulebooks Gift Set as a collection of best selling resources for DM’s and players alike. This new Rules Expansion Gift Set releases on Jan. 25 with the hobby store exclusive version featuring artist Joy Ang’s covers and presenting a brighter, more whimsical art style. At this point in the press briefing Tito and Schuh segued into more details about Monsters of the Multiverse specifically and touched on the recent leak of this book, stating WotC was looking into the matter and tracking down the source.

Pre-orders for Monsters of the Multiverse begin today, Jan. 18, 2022 including through D&D Beyond although as mentioned above the content won’t be available to purchasers until May 17.

Jeremy Crawford, principal rules designer of D&D, joined the briefing to talk in greater detail about Monsters of the Multiverse. He described the book’s origins as a dream of theirs to combine all of the monsters and playable races into one volume — specifically the ones not found in the 5E D&D Player’s Handbook and Monster Manual. Among all these races in the book Crawford noted how the tortle, which has been a part of 5E D&D for several years, only now appears for the first time in an official book. There are 33 total race options contained in the book.

As Crawford put it the design approach to this book came in two directions. Game design and balance along with storytelling potential were the team’s top priorities, which like much of 5E D&D is dedicated to player feedback. I know a lot of people may balk at any particular piece of game design and feel their desires weren’t represented but it’s worth keeping in mind there’s millions of people playing D&D these days according to data shared by WotC and it’s never going to please everyone. That’s my 2 cp anyway.

From a design standpoint the book aims to deliver comparable power and versatility to all the race options with a goal of providing every one a chance to bring something unique to a group of characters. Crawford did explicitly say these options are intentionally more powerful. On the storytelling side the team sought to streamline the material and also remove specificity. The latter is why race features like the lizardfolks’ Cunning Artisan is no longer part of the package. I asked whether Monsters of the Multiverse would include these sorts of features in something like a sidebar or appendix and I was pleased Tito selected it to ask.

The answer was no and Crawford explained how they did not want to create limitations or barriers to players’ imaginations. Perhaps the lizardfolk in your setting, or even in an official adventure, may be portrayed in the classic way including cultural qualities like the Cunning Artisan feature represents. But by removing things like this entirely it removes the potential to create expectations. Personally I think this is kind of a drawback though if only because I’ve played a lot of 5E D&D with a heck of a lot of different characters and I’ve enjoyed either leaning into these features or reimagining them in different ways. Players can still do these things but all things considered they do have mechanical components too, which will be gone going forward in official products. (I don’t know what the new lizardfolk features will be and used this race as an example in my question simply because it crossed my mind.)

After the playable races there are of course monsters with stat blocks and there’s over 250 of them in Monsters of the Multiverse. Crawford noted how this is the most monsters in one tome in Fifth Edition except for the Monster Manual, which makes sense to me the original core book of only monsters continues to contain the most. When it comes to monster design though based on feedback over the years of 5E D&D’s timeline their goal was making monsters that are a pleasure to use.

Many of the monsters in the book — especially those with high challenge rating — are much more dangerous according to Crawford. In my notes at this part I wrote to myself, “If the characters are more powerful and the monsters are more powerful is it a wash?” We’ll have to wait and see but Crawford did note how they changed how monsters have to earn their CR. What he meant is prior monster design sought only to reach a single criteria for justifying the CR based on the Monster Statistics by Challenge Rating table in the DM’s Guide. He described how stat blocks contain a sort of “ideal path” of action economy to fulfill that criteria. In other words if a DM didn’t recognize this path and follow it then the monster likely did not feel properly representative of the CR. Their new design approach incorporates multiple avenues to achieve CR benchmarks and there’s more clarity and guidance for doing so baked into the stat blocks themselves.

As game designers ourselves I asked if the Systems Reference Document would receive an update. There are many monsters in that resource also appearing in the Monster Manual and I wondered if the SRD would integrate these new designs but unfortunately the answer was no. If I’m honest I’m not sure what this might mean for third party creators, if anything, but I was glad I asked and they selected my question to answer.

Near the end of the briefing Crawford explained how the concepts and design approach in Monsters of the Multiverse is in line with what WotC plans for the revisions of the core books planned for 2024. He reinforced how those revisions are meant to be backward compatible with the original sources. My interpretation of this is while the core game system still forms the foundation for the material it may very well be wildly different in execution. With increased power through character race options and increased power of monsters it seems reasonable the revisions indicate a power increase across the board, which would render the original yet compatible material moot in practice. But we’ll see how it all comes out and let you know!

You can order the D&D Rules Expansion Gift Set here (and help support Nerdarchy!). Remember — Monsters of the Multiverse won’t be released physically or digitally as a standalone title until May 17, with preorders starting today.

Stay nerdy!