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Dungeons & Dragons
Monster Manual
The second of three core rulebooks for the 4th Edition
Dungeons & Dragons
® Roleplaying Game.
The Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game has defined the medieval fantasy genre and the tabletop RPG industry for more than 30 years. In the D&D game, players create characters that band together to explore dungeons, slay monsters, and find treasure. The 4th Edition D&D rules offer the best possible play experience by presenting exciting character options, an elegant and robust rules system, and handy storytelling tools for the Dungeon Master.
The Monster Manual presents more than 300 official Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game monsters for all levels of play, from aboleth to zombie. Each monster is illustrated and comes with complete game statistics and tips for the Dungeon Master on how best to use the monster in D&D encounters.
The Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game has defined the medieval fantasy genre and the tabletop RPG industry for more than 30 years. In the D&D game, players create characters that band together to explore dungeons, slay monsters, and find treasure. The 4th Edition D&D rules offer the best possible play experience by presenting exciting character options, an elegant and robust rules system, and handy storytelling tools for the Dungeon Master.
The Monster Manual presents more than 300 official Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game monsters for all levels of play, from aboleth to zombie. Each monster is illustrated and comes with complete game statistics and tips for the Dungeon Master on how best to use the monster in D&D encounters.
287 pages, Hardcover
First published June 6, 2008
8 people are currently reading
168 people want to read
About the author
Wizards of the Coast
429 books429 followersWizards of the Coast LLC (often referred to as WotC /ˈwɒtˌsiː/ or simply Wizards) is an American publisher of games, primarily based on fantasy and science fiction themes, and formerly an operator of retail stores for games. Originally a basement-run role-playing game publisher, the company popularized the collectible card game genre with Magic: The Gathering in the mid-1990s, acquired the popular Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game by purchasing the failing company TSR, and experienced tremendous success by publishing the licensed Pokémon Trading Card Game. The company's corporate headquarters are located in Renton, Washington in the United States.[1]
Wizards of the Coast publishes role-playing games, board games, and collectible card games. They have received numerous awards, including several Origins Awards. The company has been a subsidiary of Hasbro since 1999. All Wizards of the Coast stores were closed in 2004.
Wizards of the Coast publishes role-playing games, board games, and collectible card games. They have received numerous awards, including several Origins Awards. The company has been a subsidiary of Hasbro since 1999. All Wizards of the Coast stores were closed in 2004.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
February 18, 2022
Full disclosure: This is the book that turned me away from D&D 4th Edition. Over a decade later, I've given it another chance... and while it's not as bad as I thought at the time and has its merits, it's still the least interesting core monster book D&D has produced.
First, the positives. There are a massive quantity of monsters in the book, one of the largest of any edition. Granted, many of these are variants of individual monsters, but this is still a strength: nearly every monster has at least two "flavors" you can choose from across various levels or themes. The monsters also span a wide variety of levels and environments, providing a monster for just about any situation.
Every monster is designed to have mechanically interesting abilities for use in tactical combat, and each comes with specific battle tactics and pre-made encounter groups (complete with XP totals), making it very easy to construct battles. I also liked that each monster came with tables of lore skill checks, broken out by skill and difficulty class, so you know what to tell players when they ask what they might know about a given creature.
The book ends with a section on "Racial Traits", which provide rules for NPC or PC versions of a number of monsters, adding value for players as well. (This listing includes gnomes, which were infamously just monsters at the start of 4E.)
Unfortunately, most of these positives have negatives that balance them out. Most of the variants are only differentiated by statistics and names, with many not even getting a thin explanation for why or how they differ from the base monster. (This can be particularly frustrating when a monster or variant looks or sounds really cool, and you learn barely anything else about them.)
It's obvious that much more time was spent on the statblocks and combat than on flavor; at best, one suspects they thought catchy names for powers were usually flavor enough (they're not). Even the lore tables, as neat an idea as they are, tend to provide very little in terms of story ideas, and most monsters only get a few sentences beyond that. This makes much of the book a fairly dry read, if you aren't a big fan of combat rules and statistics.
And sometimes even the mechanics aren't that interesting: a number of variants are little more than a bigger, meaner version, or a version with slightly adjusted powers.
Meanwhile, the racial traits are pretty bare-bones, and seem split between interestingly flavorful powers and ones that seem like tactically minded filler - and even the latter sometimes have very limited utility (looking at you, goblin and kobold).
There are other oddities as well. Illustrations don't always tell you which monster is which variant. They also don't provide encounter groups for every variant. The book appears to lack any good monsters, with even traditionally heroic creatures like angels and unicorns being "any" alignment or just "unaligned." (It's been suggested that the designers wanted to make sure every monster in the book could be a viable target.) Some monsters are based on templates, but they only provide examples here, pointing you instead to the 4E DMG for the template rules. They shy away from providing stat blocks for mundane animals, with most only listing fantastical variants; reading between the lines, I guess they thought stats for mundane animals would be pointless. They even rename dinosaurs to "behemoths" for some reason.
Fortunately for 4E, they fixed many of the above issues in the Monster Vault. Some of this book's positives were lost, but the lore especially is much better. I would strongly recommend the later book over this book. (Unfortunately for 4E, the Monster Vault was too late to help save it.)
I'll conclude this review with assorted comments on the monsters (avoiding repeats from the Monster Vault):
In conclusion - while I appreciate the strengths of the 4E Monster Manual now, more than I did back when it was new, there are still too many drawbacks for it to be among the greatest D&D monster books. Even in 4E, it was outdone by its successor, the Monster Vault. Still, it may have some value for especially creative DMs who are willing to fill in the lightweight lore, or those who want a wide variety of tactically deep monsters to spice up their combat. But if you're trying to sell someone on D&D, this is not the book I'd start with... (B-)
First, the positives. There are a massive quantity of monsters in the book, one of the largest of any edition. Granted, many of these are variants of individual monsters, but this is still a strength: nearly every monster has at least two "flavors" you can choose from across various levels or themes. The monsters also span a wide variety of levels and environments, providing a monster for just about any situation.
Every monster is designed to have mechanically interesting abilities for use in tactical combat, and each comes with specific battle tactics and pre-made encounter groups (complete with XP totals), making it very easy to construct battles. I also liked that each monster came with tables of lore skill checks, broken out by skill and difficulty class, so you know what to tell players when they ask what they might know about a given creature.
The book ends with a section on "Racial Traits", which provide rules for NPC or PC versions of a number of monsters, adding value for players as well. (This listing includes gnomes, which were infamously just monsters at the start of 4E.)
Unfortunately, most of these positives have negatives that balance them out. Most of the variants are only differentiated by statistics and names, with many not even getting a thin explanation for why or how they differ from the base monster. (This can be particularly frustrating when a monster or variant looks or sounds really cool, and you learn barely anything else about them.)
It's obvious that much more time was spent on the statblocks and combat than on flavor; at best, one suspects they thought catchy names for powers were usually flavor enough (they're not). Even the lore tables, as neat an idea as they are, tend to provide very little in terms of story ideas, and most monsters only get a few sentences beyond that. This makes much of the book a fairly dry read, if you aren't a big fan of combat rules and statistics.
And sometimes even the mechanics aren't that interesting: a number of variants are little more than a bigger, meaner version, or a version with slightly adjusted powers.
Meanwhile, the racial traits are pretty bare-bones, and seem split between interestingly flavorful powers and ones that seem like tactically minded filler - and even the latter sometimes have very limited utility (looking at you, goblin and kobold).
There are other oddities as well. Illustrations don't always tell you which monster is which variant. They also don't provide encounter groups for every variant. The book appears to lack any good monsters, with even traditionally heroic creatures like angels and unicorns being "any" alignment or just "unaligned." (It's been suggested that the designers wanted to make sure every monster in the book could be a viable target.) Some monsters are based on templates, but they only provide examples here, pointing you instead to the 4E DMG for the template rules. They shy away from providing stat blocks for mundane animals, with most only listing fantastical variants; reading between the lines, I guess they thought stats for mundane animals would be pointless. They even rename dinosaurs to "behemoths" for some reason.
Fortunately for 4E, they fixed many of the above issues in the Monster Vault. Some of this book's positives were lost, but the lore especially is much better. I would strongly recommend the later book over this book. (Unfortunately for 4E, the Monster Vault was too late to help save it.)
I'll conclude this review with assorted comments on the monsters (avoiding repeats from the Monster Vault):
In conclusion - while I appreciate the strengths of the 4E Monster Manual now, more than I did back when it was new, there are still too many drawbacks for it to be among the greatest D&D monster books. Even in 4E, it was outdone by its successor, the Monster Vault. Still, it may have some value for especially creative DMs who are willing to fill in the lightweight lore, or those who want a wide variety of tactically deep monsters to spice up their combat. But if you're trying to sell someone on D&D, this is not the book I'd start with... (B-)
January 12, 2018
Far too much to do with what a monster's stats are and how to kill them; relatively little concerning how they live.
January 31, 2011
A little too light on fluff for me. Prefer fluff.
April 23, 2025
I enjoy repeatedly consulting this RPG game book because it not only gives you a summary of so many different fantasy creatures, monsters, and myths, but also lets you in on the more creative additions to the mythos based on the gameplay of the creators at Wizards of the Coast. Fascinating stuff.
December 1, 2022
Kinda mid from a feature standpoint but I learned on it and liked it
August 14, 2024
It was good except I was very confused about many things but I don't know if thats just because I'm a beginner at d and d.
May 21, 2009
The Player's Handbook is the crucial book in D&D, but the Monster Manual is not far behind. And the 4th edition Monster Manual, while not a home run, is a pretty good evolution of the Monster Manuals I-V of D&D 3.5.
I'll start with what I miss. The description of each monster that could be read to the players was handy, and while there was never a ton of information about the monsters, the 4th edition Monster Manual definitely stresses the tactical aspect of the new game. Each monster gets a tiny paragraph to describe it's basic purpose in the game. No information on their usual habitat, their history, etc. Tellingly, they each get a tiny paragraph of tactical advice instead.
I'm also a touch annoyed that the Lore section, an outgrowth of the great Knowledge sections in the later 3.5 Monster Manuals, is not stronger. It's nice that the monsters all *have* that section, but it'd be nicer if it had some useful information for players that make their knowledge checks. As is, you make your knowledge check, and unless the GM ad-libs, you get a quick, fairly useless history of the monster, rather than any hint as to their abilities or weaknesses.
So that's the complaints. But what works is so strong I'm compelled to more or less ignore them. The biggest change is re-packaging the monsters so that you don't have to create every single one as if it were a character. Dragons are now playable out of the book. Human bad guys don't require you to roll up characters. And every monster has different level versions of itself, and different tactics and powers. It makes it much easier for a DM to throw together an encounter on the fly, and more importantly, the different powers make all the monsters (even the ubiquitous orcs, kobolds and hobgoblins) interesting and more unique.
Plus, as with all the Wizards stuff, it's packed with beautiful artwork, which is crucial to a good Monster Manual.
I'll start with what I miss. The description of each monster that could be read to the players was handy, and while there was never a ton of information about the monsters, the 4th edition Monster Manual definitely stresses the tactical aspect of the new game. Each monster gets a tiny paragraph to describe it's basic purpose in the game. No information on their usual habitat, their history, etc. Tellingly, they each get a tiny paragraph of tactical advice instead.
I'm also a touch annoyed that the Lore section, an outgrowth of the great Knowledge sections in the later 3.5 Monster Manuals, is not stronger. It's nice that the monsters all *have* that section, but it'd be nicer if it had some useful information for players that make their knowledge checks. As is, you make your knowledge check, and unless the GM ad-libs, you get a quick, fairly useless history of the monster, rather than any hint as to their abilities or weaknesses.
So that's the complaints. But what works is so strong I'm compelled to more or less ignore them. The biggest change is re-packaging the monsters so that you don't have to create every single one as if it were a character. Dragons are now playable out of the book. Human bad guys don't require you to roll up characters. And every monster has different level versions of itself, and different tactics and powers. It makes it much easier for a DM to throw together an encounter on the fly, and more importantly, the different powers make all the monsters (even the ubiquitous orcs, kobolds and hobgoblins) interesting and more unique.
Plus, as with all the Wizards stuff, it's packed with beautiful artwork, which is crucial to a good Monster Manual.
May 14, 2016
★ - Most books with this rating I never finish and so don't make this list. This one I probably started speed-reading to get it over with.
★★ - Average. Wasn't terrible, but not a lot to recommend it. Probably skimmed parts of it.
★★★ - Decent. A few good ideas, well-written passages, interesting characters, or the like.
★★★★ - Good. This one had parts that inspired me, impressed me, made me laugh out loud, made me think - it got positive reactions and most of the rest of it was pretty decent too.
★★★★★ - Amazing. This is the best I've read of its genre, the ones I hold on to so I can re-read them and/or loan them out to people looking for a great book. The best of these change the way I look at the world and operate within it.
★★ - Average. Wasn't terrible, but not a lot to recommend it. Probably skimmed parts of it.
★★★ - Decent. A few good ideas, well-written passages, interesting characters, or the like.
★★★★ - Good. This one had parts that inspired me, impressed me, made me laugh out loud, made me think - it got positive reactions and most of the rest of it was pretty decent too.
★★★★★ - Amazing. This is the best I've read of its genre, the ones I hold on to so I can re-read them and/or loan them out to people looking for a great book. The best of these change the way I look at the world and operate within it.
July 28, 2013
This is the weakest of the new 4th edition core rule books. The main problem with it is the multiplication of just plain strange monsters at the expense of the old classic monsters from the old 1st edition. I can only assume that the changes were driven by the desire to increase sales for WOTC by spreading the monsters that people want across multiple volumes, and to increase the number of monsters to create figurines for.
December 8, 2008
An excellent initial tome of beasties for the D&D 4th Edition game. It very much is a Part 1 in the Monster Manual series, lacking some very basic creatures/animals, but it certainly provides enough fodder to throw at heroes of all levels.
September 3, 2008
Looks like your pretty standard monster compendium. I am please with the manner in which they layout the abilities and explain how they can be used. Probably the best part in each entry is the Strategy section, just as it has been in previous versions.
January 5, 2009
Not much new or interesting. Lots of beasts with fatal flaws so a standard group of regular gamers will be able to kill them without getting wiped out. I was hoping for some new, original monsters and with few exceptions, they all felt like they'd been done before.
November 10, 2009
Sleek artwork. Owlbears still.
April 27, 2011
I like how they setup the monsters tactics and powers. I found some interesting ideas for my next encounters.
May 1, 2015
good book of monsters for 4th ed dnd!
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews